Once the card is inserted, and the interfaces are loaded into the tables (ARP/IP/MAC, etc) and the IOS has loaded the microcode for the card, it can't back it out. You'll also see this with sub-interfaces (for instance PVC's under a serial port).

We once had a telco make a mistake and load 250 DLCIs to one of our routers. After all the DLCI's made it into the tables, they were there (under the sho fram pvc command) for quite a while.